the ice in his eyes
I just want to put this down before tonight.
It's weird how people will visibly react to his name. Last week, three people in two days reacted exactly the same way. Pseudo-Boss, Fellow Virgo Guy and the Chabon court officer. It's like this visible shudder and a withdrawal, turning away. All negative.
It's quite distressing, really. Actually I let the Chabon court officer have it cos he was typically Scorpio scornful and ignorant, too. And he did the Carrey comparison which I refuted with instant irritation but then realised later how right I was.
I love Jim Carrey and I always have but Jerry is so much more fascinating and varied than Jim. Jer's a writer, a director, a producer, an actor of drama and comedy, an improviser, a vaudeville entertainer, a physical comedian.
I know Jim writes some and possibly has directed something recently and thank goodness he's had the opportunity and determination to expand into drama. And it's kind of a pity that --- waitasecond, SNL is totally the contemporary equivalent of vaudeville on television, skit comedy like the Colgate Comedy Hour. And Carrey was on that too, wasn't he?
Huh. Maybe I should properly watch the SNL archives so I can compare properly. And maybe Jim just needs time and more opportunity to become all those things.
I don't know. I just find Jerry so much more innovative and interesting. Is it the musical aspect? I do love that SO much about him, it's so thrilling on so many levels. And I can't think of anyone in the current comedy climate who does that. Not that I know anything of the current climate. Tim Minchin is of course highly musical and pretty awesome like that but he uses words and vocals. I love the wordless aspect of Jer, in effect the mime.
Is that why he's embarrassing and ridiculed? Cos he combines mime and slapstick with that infantile persona? It's not dignified enough, adult enough, intelligent and intellectual enough?
But it is SO intelligent. That precision of timing that slapstick requires, the colossal amount of emotional intelligence that is required for the nuance of mime. And, well, I love the intellectual shock that is his infantile persona. I wish more people felt like that, understood it like that. It's quite upsetting that people are automatically dismissive and contemptuous of him.
The possible homophobia does trouble me a little. I don't know the details, if it was indeed --- no, that was the female comics thing --- and I haven't yet figured out if his frequent smooches of Dean and other guys is a sort of homophobia in itself. He does use the semblance of homosexuality, with the smooches as a way of attack, a shock tactic. But then he goes and titles his biography 'A Love Story', sort of having it both ways. And when Dick Cavett responds to his campy voice by saying "There are many sides to you", Jerry does this sort of wry silent smile to one side. And then the other night with James Lipton, he willingly implicates himself when he calls Randolph Scott a 'fag' and again makes no response to James Lipton pointing out the implication.
I bet you the moment he dies, there will be at least one biography about him being totally gay and in the closet all his life. Or at least bisexual cos god, all those kids!
But then he uses the word 'fag' or 'faggot' in public arenas in apparently derogatory contexts and I don't know if that's a generation show business thing or not. It's troubling. But then I look at how openly unaffectedly affectionate he is with so many men and that just makes me love him so much.
He is VERY intimidating in interview form. The danger of him becomes totally overt, becomes a menacing sort of intellect in the hardness of his eyes and the force of his verbal expression and the quick snappishness of his tone. I say this based on a bit of the Dick Cavett interview and a bit of the Bob Costas interview, both from the Seventies I think. He scared me so much cos he was so unsmiling and silently aggressive, sort of resentful and slightly contemptuous. I could see exactly why people call him arrogant. Seeing that and then watching The Nutty Professor, meeting Buddy Love made me very very uncomfortable. It's like for a while there after the film, he did become Buddy Love and that disturbs me so much, that he would feel the need to be that hard and forbidding. Arrogant.
It's funny how I don't find that offensive as such. Prolly cos I think he has a perfect right to be arrogant --- IF he is --- cos he is so immensely intelligent and wholly underappreciated.
Ha. It would offend me if he was dumb and arrogant. In my usual way.
I would prolly react the exact same way if I was faced with the same backlash. First people loved him, he could do no wrong. Then he became an embarrassment, ridiculed and rejected by the public of his own country, by the studio that supported him for so long. It would be a monumental battle to take that with grace and not the slightest hint of belligerence. He lost his dearest partner, hurt and was hurt, regained that friendship but it could never be the same, separated by time and achievement as they were.
And to see how much energy and time he puts into his work, how involved he is in every aspect, full of vision and sparing no effort to make it true. To do so much and then be rejected and ridiculed must have been the bitterest thing to experience. I couldn't take it and keep going. Could I? I'd withdraw completely. Certainly not do something like a telethon year after year, knowing people were entirely sick of me.
So it was very much a relief to hear him acknowledge that arrogance in the Lipton interview and see it borne out in the interviews since then. He's so much warmer and kindlier now. Now he looks like a great big cuddly grand uncle.
Which makes me feel very guilty.
Because the weirdest thing is I long for him, for the Jer of the Colgate Comedy Hour. Lean tall dishevelled Jerry Lewis in his silky tuxedo with the collar open around his lovely throat, the white fabric framed by the hanging ends of his undone black bow tie. All that wild unpredictable energy flashing around him, twitching in the unconscious flex of his long fine hands, glinting in the light of those strange greeny-browny-hazely-almost-bluey-in-some-lights eyes. I see him dart or saunter onto the screen and I long to know that man, to talk with him and discover the way his mind works.
And that makes me feel quite guilty and disloyal to the Jerry of now who should command all my attention. But clearly I am superficial cos Jerry Lewis in 2009 seems like this whole other person --- an imposter almost --- compared to the Jerry Lewis of 1950. And it's purely a physical thing because when I watch interviews of him post-50s right until now, he opens his mouth and his voice is almost exactly the same.
*sigh* Hence me wanting that time machine.
All the way back when. And ha, I love that I've been talking about time machines around the birthday of HG Wells. Totally didn't know until I just hovered over the Google pic. Hee!
Of course all this could change after tonight. And I wanted to put it out there so I have absolutely no chance of taking it back.
It's weird how people will visibly react to his name. Last week, three people in two days reacted exactly the same way. Pseudo-Boss, Fellow Virgo Guy and the Chabon court officer. It's like this visible shudder and a withdrawal, turning away. All negative.
It's quite distressing, really. Actually I let the Chabon court officer have it cos he was typically Scorpio scornful and ignorant, too. And he did the Carrey comparison which I refuted with instant irritation but then realised later how right I was.
I love Jim Carrey and I always have but Jerry is so much more fascinating and varied than Jim. Jer's a writer, a director, a producer, an actor of drama and comedy, an improviser, a vaudeville entertainer, a physical comedian.
I know Jim writes some and possibly has directed something recently and thank goodness he's had the opportunity and determination to expand into drama. And it's kind of a pity that --- waitasecond, SNL is totally the contemporary equivalent of vaudeville on television, skit comedy like the Colgate Comedy Hour. And Carrey was on that too, wasn't he?
Huh. Maybe I should properly watch the SNL archives so I can compare properly. And maybe Jim just needs time and more opportunity to become all those things.
I don't know. I just find Jerry so much more innovative and interesting. Is it the musical aspect? I do love that SO much about him, it's so thrilling on so many levels. And I can't think of anyone in the current comedy climate who does that. Not that I know anything of the current climate. Tim Minchin is of course highly musical and pretty awesome like that but he uses words and vocals. I love the wordless aspect of Jer, in effect the mime.
Is that why he's embarrassing and ridiculed? Cos he combines mime and slapstick with that infantile persona? It's not dignified enough, adult enough, intelligent and intellectual enough?
But it is SO intelligent. That precision of timing that slapstick requires, the colossal amount of emotional intelligence that is required for the nuance of mime. And, well, I love the intellectual shock that is his infantile persona. I wish more people felt like that, understood it like that. It's quite upsetting that people are automatically dismissive and contemptuous of him.
The possible homophobia does trouble me a little. I don't know the details, if it was indeed --- no, that was the female comics thing --- and I haven't yet figured out if his frequent smooches of Dean and other guys is a sort of homophobia in itself. He does use the semblance of homosexuality, with the smooches as a way of attack, a shock tactic. But then he goes and titles his biography 'A Love Story', sort of having it both ways. And when Dick Cavett responds to his campy voice by saying "There are many sides to you", Jerry does this sort of wry silent smile to one side. And then the other night with James Lipton, he willingly implicates himself when he calls Randolph Scott a 'fag' and again makes no response to James Lipton pointing out the implication.
I bet you the moment he dies, there will be at least one biography about him being totally gay and in the closet all his life. Or at least bisexual cos god, all those kids!
But then he uses the word 'fag' or 'faggot' in public arenas in apparently derogatory contexts and I don't know if that's a generation show business thing or not. It's troubling. But then I look at how openly unaffectedly affectionate he is with so many men and that just makes me love him so much.
He is VERY intimidating in interview form. The danger of him becomes totally overt, becomes a menacing sort of intellect in the hardness of his eyes and the force of his verbal expression and the quick snappishness of his tone. I say this based on a bit of the Dick Cavett interview and a bit of the Bob Costas interview, both from the Seventies I think. He scared me so much cos he was so unsmiling and silently aggressive, sort of resentful and slightly contemptuous. I could see exactly why people call him arrogant. Seeing that and then watching The Nutty Professor, meeting Buddy Love made me very very uncomfortable. It's like for a while there after the film, he did become Buddy Love and that disturbs me so much, that he would feel the need to be that hard and forbidding. Arrogant.
It's funny how I don't find that offensive as such. Prolly cos I think he has a perfect right to be arrogant --- IF he is --- cos he is so immensely intelligent and wholly underappreciated.
Ha. It would offend me if he was dumb and arrogant. In my usual way.
I would prolly react the exact same way if I was faced with the same backlash. First people loved him, he could do no wrong. Then he became an embarrassment, ridiculed and rejected by the public of his own country, by the studio that supported him for so long. It would be a monumental battle to take that with grace and not the slightest hint of belligerence. He lost his dearest partner, hurt and was hurt, regained that friendship but it could never be the same, separated by time and achievement as they were.
And to see how much energy and time he puts into his work, how involved he is in every aspect, full of vision and sparing no effort to make it true. To do so much and then be rejected and ridiculed must have been the bitterest thing to experience. I couldn't take it and keep going. Could I? I'd withdraw completely. Certainly not do something like a telethon year after year, knowing people were entirely sick of me.
So it was very much a relief to hear him acknowledge that arrogance in the Lipton interview and see it borne out in the interviews since then. He's so much warmer and kindlier now. Now he looks like a great big cuddly grand uncle.
Which makes me feel very guilty.
Because the weirdest thing is I long for him, for the Jer of the Colgate Comedy Hour. Lean tall dishevelled Jerry Lewis in his silky tuxedo with the collar open around his lovely throat, the white fabric framed by the hanging ends of his undone black bow tie. All that wild unpredictable energy flashing around him, twitching in the unconscious flex of his long fine hands, glinting in the light of those strange greeny-browny-hazely-almost-bluey-in-some-lights eyes. I see him dart or saunter onto the screen and I long to know that man, to talk with him and discover the way his mind works.
And that makes me feel quite guilty and disloyal to the Jerry of now who should command all my attention. But clearly I am superficial cos Jerry Lewis in 2009 seems like this whole other person --- an imposter almost --- compared to the Jerry Lewis of 1950. And it's purely a physical thing because when I watch interviews of him post-50s right until now, he opens his mouth and his voice is almost exactly the same.
*sigh* Hence me wanting that time machine.
All the way back when. And ha, I love that I've been talking about time machines around the birthday of HG Wells. Totally didn't know until I just hovered over the Google pic. Hee!
Of course all this could change after tonight. And I wanted to put it out there so I have absolutely no chance of taking it back.